Darren Parker | Sport & recreation

Darren Parker

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25.01.2022 Street Machine Drag Challenge prep is done and I'm ready to head over to Calder for scrutineering tomorrow morning. The wagon had daily driver duties this week that included running the kids around, driving me to work and BMX for the three of us this morning. A quick wash this afternoon after lunch, oil change and wheel change done and less a bit of packing which I'll do later tonight.... Tomorrow morning is scrutineering for the week and DYO group photo. Looking forward to getting on the track on Monday and then hitting the road to start the Drag Challenge adventure!

25.01.2022 Not a bad write up if I do say so myself.

24.01.2022 Thanks to the Dragnews team, here are some pics of the GXP at the Nationals a couple of weeks ago.

23.01.2022 The final day of 2018 Drag Challenge and the wagon is in the staging lanes at Calder Park and ready to make a hit. The air isn't too bad, but it is blowing straight up the track! Just to throw another curve ball into the game. On track until 9pm tonight and i might need every run to hit the Mark!

23.01.2022 Back at Swan Hill for day 4 of Drag Challenge. Lots of sun and a very cool breeze from the left side of the track. Class cars about to hit the track then DYO from 10am.... Apparently we have a 400+km drive back to Melbourne this afternoon, but I'm looking forward to my own bed and pillow after 3 days of motel and caravan park beds!

22.01.2022 It's like Christmas in August when parts start rolling in the door. Today I received the Setrab engine oil cooler and Speedflow hose fittings from Motorsport Connections in Moorabbin. (Thanks for the great service Marcos!) The Improved Racing Thermostatically controlled fitting for the block on the LS3 came straight from the USA. The best bit about this is it only opens to direct oil through the cooler when the oil reaches 82c. This helps the engine warm up normally and not ...over cool the oil on a cold day. Adding the cooler will also add some volume to the oil. I'll get these fitted on the horse next week and document the fitting procedure. I have some more parts coming that have been stuck in customs since Friday. I don't think DHL can cope with every package coming in now having 10% gst added to it. I lodged a query with them today as I haven't heard from them regarding gst payment. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut!

21.01.2022 Another Christmas in August parcel delivery today. Suspension components from BMR in the USA arrived after spending 6 days in customs. Similar to boxing the trailing arms on an old Torana, these arms are stronger than factory, remove the soft factory rubber bushes as well as adding adjustability outside of what the car comes with from factory.... The two boxes also contain bushes for the diff and rear hubs to tighten them up more positively. All that means more power to the ground, more efficiently. Keen eyes will also notice a bolt on 360 driveshaft loop as well. Engine cooler will be going on next week and then the suspension components will follow. October 13 at Swan Hill for the VDRC, MDRC race meeting followed by Drag Challenge in November!

21.01.2022 Sitting in second place after day three with the positions now going down to 6 decimal places! The weather was great today and the Mildura crew did a great job with the track in the hot sun. The day started cold and overcast but the track needed some heat in it. Just before our 10am start time the sun came out and warmed the track up while the air was still nice and cool. A lot of the class cars put their first pass in and hit the road back to Swan Hill. My first pass was a... baseline to work out how much I had to slow it down. After that it took a couple of passes to get it almost right with the 1.555 factor being multiplied to get the 1/4 mile time. Swan Hill again tomorrow and hopefully similar weather to Tuesday when we were here.

20.01.2022 Another nice little write up and video of the wagon from Drag Challenge .

20.01.2022 Video from Q2 yesterday against Adrian!

19.01.2022 Time to catch my breath after a massive day at Swan Hill Dragway yesterday. The kids and i had an early start to the track with a 9.15am first qualifier. I was keen and was in the first pairing at the front of the staging lanes after they called the ET bracket to the lanes. Unfortunately that first run, the RH lane had a tree malfunction which meant my lights didnt come down to signal the start of the race. on the re-run i ran an 11.695 @ 117.89mph which was slower than I had...Continue reading

18.01.2022 Apologies for the lack of updates in recent times, but major lifestyle changes have taken place in the last 20 months that have meant that the GXP has moved onto another life racing in Sydney in Top Sportsman guise with a Twin Turbo LS3 under the hood and has so far run a 6.7 @ 206 mph. Congratulations to Stuart Bennett on the car's almost instant improvement in ET and MPH and I wish you all the success and more that I had in the car in Super Stock. If anyone is looking for ...a 400ci SBC making over 1100HP and ready to set records in Group 2, along with the Proflite transmission, converters and diff centres out of the car, you know how to get in touch with me!! I am still around the sport, on the Vic/Tas DC, still doing Tech Insepctions, still involved with the National Rules Committee and still have a severe love of Drag Racing in general. Today I took a step to get back into a car and go racing by entering my LS3 powered Holden Commodore Sportswagon into the 2018 Street Machine Drag Challenge (Australia's version of Drag Week in the USA) being held at Calder, Swan Hill, Mildura, Swan Hill and back at Calder for the final day. I know the car isnt going to be a 7 second race car like the GXP was, but it is like stepping back 20 years to the days of the VP SS running 12's and 13's in Super Street when I first started racing. I have entered the DYO class and i'll use the page to show my progress in getting the car ready to compete at drag week. So far the car has run 11.611 @ 122mph and I am working on a list of improvements to make the car more reliable and more consistent for racing at 5 tracks over the 5 days. (It has run 11.611 and 11.615 in baseline testing so far!) As parts come in I will document their fitment, testing of the products and real world feedback on what they have done to the car. Some of the modifications will be with the intention of making the car a bit faster and some of them will be based around reliability. (The car is still my daily driver, 50% of the time!) As a baseline for this program, the car has Higgins CNC Heads, Cam, Twin 3" Bimodal Exhaust, OTR Intake, MSD 2-Step, Coilovers, 18" M/T Drag Radials and 18" Front Runners and has run a best of 11.611 @ 121.99 mph at a recent Calder T&T. With the tuning support of John Lloyd at Street Quick Performance in Perth I picked up an immediate 0.2 of a second in ET (previous best was 11.8 back in May) by tuning the transmission to shift properly and fix a few tuning issues with the engine that were unexplainable in the engine program. Powerwise, the little LS3 made 353rwkw (470rwhp) when it was dynod originally, but now we're working on tuning at the track using the EFI-Live Data logging features for real world conditions. So hopefully this page will get a bit more active in the coming months leading up to Drag Challendge and you will get some value out of the upgrades i am making to the car! Here are some pics of the car as it sits now!

18.01.2022 Winner winner chicken dinner!!! It took 3 runs today to put in a 0.001 pass! Off the street with an 11.692. Add some ballast for an 11.777 and I figured that it burnt some fuel on the lap back so I went out to try and tighten it up and put down an 11.775 on an 11.774 dial in.... DYO winner for Drag Challenge 2018 with 0.008 total time for the week! Congratulations to Paul Topping on Runner Up in a very tight class!

17.01.2022 Day 1 of Drag Challenge and it's time to go racing! Class cars from 9-10am then DYO from 10.00 Hanging to get the big girl out there for a squirt!

17.01.2022 A warm day at Calder today, however it will be cooler than Swan Hill and Mildura over the next three days. 11.774 and 11.776 today sets my dial in for the remainder of the week. Are we racing to three decimal places? All loaded up and heading to Swan Hill via Elmore.

17.01.2022 It has been a while since my last post, but just a quick one to let you know I am still here and still playing with cars! The wagon has gone to a new loving home and I am working away on a new build, a Supercharged VF Commodore built as if Holden offered a factory race car, like Chevrolet have done with the Copo Camaro. If you have instagram, get over there and check out ALL the details of the build. dparker.2362 ... If not I will try to get back here every now and then and post updates. In the meantime check out some of the pics from when the car arrived, stripped down and now starting work on suspension, etc. The car was bought as a write off with front bar and cross member damage. All of that has been fixed and i am currently working towards having the roll cage and 9" live axle conversion done on the chassis. Just like the Copo Camaro I am building a Blown LS to run on a 30x9" radial tyre. this is going to be a budget build and there are a number of interchangeable components between the Gen 5 camaro and the VF. No Wheel Tubs, Standard chassis with a cage and parachute! Lots of work still to be done, but all good fun!

16.01.2022 Another late night in the workshop tonight putting the BMR suspension arms and bushes in. I had to make another small puller up for the trailing arm bushes but that was a 10min job for the little bushes. So it now has adjustable lower control arms, stronger trailing arms with front heim and urethane rear bush and adjustable toe rods that don't use the factory cam bolts. The cable ties are holding the ABS wiring on the toe rod and the park brake cable is pulled away from the 1...8" rim inside lip. Tomorrow night will be the diff bushes and cradle bushes. I have also had to modify the BMR driveshaft loop. I am not sure if it is the difference between right and left hand drive or the welded the main plate upside down. Hmmm. Either way it will all work once done.

15.01.2022 Have just finished my 2 qualifying runs up here in sunny Swan Hill! The wind is blowing and there is a lot of dust around slowing progress down as the track is being regularly dragged clean. A few crashes and clean ups in the last hour have caused some problems.... In the cool of the morning I went 11.68 and then on the second run in the heat of the day 11.74. Mph is quite a bit down on the last time I raced at Calder. Kids are having fun and enjoying a day at the track. Lots of different cars racing in the ET class. From a nostalgic 55 chev to a couple of Chargers and some late model EFI cars as well. You forget how long it is between runs when there is no maintenance to be done on a the car. So different to racing the GXP. Our dry and dusty pit area.

15.01.2022 After a relaxing drive up to Swan Hill today the kids and I have been out to the track, checked into the motel and had a swim.... well the kids have had a 10 minute dip in the cold pool! Lol Being a single day race tomorrow it will be an early start with out first qualifying pass at 9.15am. The air should still be good then so I'll be looking to make a solid first pass. After the suspension mods I have done and a bit more fine tuning I am hoping to run an 11.5X and will keep ...you updated through the day. Being a street car all I am doing is fitting the drag radials and opening up the bimodal exhaust to flow out both rear mufflers. (This might be a tuning tool on drag challenge when I need to slow the car down as it takes around 15-20rwkw out of the car.) Looking forward to getting back behind the wheel and getting down the Swan Hill track!

14.01.2022 2 weeks ago today we were getting ready for the final day of Drag Challenge at Calder Park. This evening I'll be loading the wagon to head up to Ballarat tomorrow morning to race at the Radial Life No Excuses Heads Up meeting. I'll be in the 325 tyre class and looking forward to having a crack against the big tyre, big power cars.... I haven't raced at Ballarat since I had the VP running 10s and had my first win there so let's see if I can keep the roll going!

12.01.2022 11.772 on 11.774 dial in. Back in the swing of DYO.

12.01.2022 Nice review of Super Comp at the Nationals by Sporting Scribe Muscle.

11.01.2022 Scrutineering done and DYO group photo to come at around 12pm. Very keen to get back here tomorrow morning for Round 1 of Drag Challenge 2018

10.01.2022 Day 3 of Drag Challenge and we're in Mildura for some 1/8th mile racing. Currently sitting in third position in a very tight field! Today will sort us all out as some cars will need to go faster on the 1.555 factor to calculate their 1/4 mile time where I need to slow mine down a couple of hundredths of a second.... Lots of rain over night and dust storms through NSW on our trip from Swan Hill.

10.01.2022 Video from one of today's passes.

09.01.2022 Picked up the carbon bonnet this morning for the VF. Thanks to Todd and Veejay at Patterson Elite for getting it sorted and packed properly for the trip to Australia. Unfortunately the VF isn't here to put it on so I'll have to wait until Craig Burns has finished the cage and 4-link and the car is back in Melbourne to do that.... I think I'll mount it on the wall in the house as some art while I'm waiting for the car to arrive!

06.01.2022 Engine oil cooler DONE! Improved Racing Thermo adaptor bolted to the block without any drama. I installed it with the fittings facing down as the engine mount and knock sensor was in the way with the fittings upright. It's a much neater fit this was around and is still a lot higher than the headers and sump so no worries on the hoses getting hooked on anything. Setrab oil cooler bolted to the bumper bar was a bit of a pain to get mounted. I needed a 90 drill adaptor to get i...n and drill the pilot holes for the M6 rivet nuts. And I used the 90 drill to add the clearance hole for the fittings through the intake duct. (In the photos the top cooler is the transmission fluid cooler with -6 hoses and the smaller cooler under the alloy bar with -10 fittings is the engine oil cooler.) Hose and fittings are Speedflow and the Setrab cooler supplied by Marcos at Motorsport Connections in Moorabbin. You will also notice I fitted some Speedflow fire sleeve where the hose runs past the engine and exhaust. This was leftovers from the fuel system on the GXP. Before final fitment to the car I filled the lines and cooler with engine oil to avoid any chance of starvation on start up. Using the Bluetooth OBDII reader and Torque app on my phone I watched oil pressure on start up and there was no hesitation to pressure. The idea of the Thermo adaptor by Improved Racing is to allow the oil to warm up quickly by only sending 5% of the oil through the cooler while it is cold. When the oil gets to 82c the valve starts to open allowing more oil to the cooler. At 95c it is fully open and sending 100% of oil to the cooler. This ensures you don't over cool the oil on a cold day. In normal daily driving I have been monitoring oil temp and have seen it peak at 103c so it will be interesting to see how much cooler it is in daily duties. Next week is the BMR suspension arms and bushes going into the rear end.

06.01.2022 Day 2 of Drag Challenge at Swan Hill Dragway. All set up and ready to go racing. Funny story, lost the rubber pad off my trolley jack when we raced up here a month ago. Went for a walk this morning and it was still there waiting for me!... Some pics of the track this morning, Elmore train station check in and in transit shot somewhere between Calder and Elmore.

06.01.2022 Day 4 of 2018 Drag Challenge is in the books. With Frank Marchese recording the fastest DC pass ever and John Ricca running the fastest 6 Cylinder pass today at Swan Hill (congratulations!!!) I didn't want to be left out, so first pass of the day in some very cool air and a very sticky track I reeled off a PB 1.59 to 60' and 11.590 at the 1/4 mile! Loving Swan Hill! ... Then the realisation of having to slow the car down to my 11.774 dial in. Adding some fuel (ballast) and closing the bimodal exhaust I was able to slow the big girl down to an 11.810. Back to back the only change I made was to open the bimodals and reeled off an 11.770 pass to put me into first place!! There were a number of Top 10 DYO racers running laps to try and get close to their dial in right up to the 3pm cutoff, however a variable headwind made it difficult to get their cars where they wanted them and a couple have fallen off the Top 10 list. Paul Topping from Adelaide is in second place and he did 9 passes today to submit a run he was happy with! After a 400km drive via Lake Tyrell this afternoon we're on to Calder tomorrow night and another challenge with us on track from 3pm to 9pm, just to add to the variable weather we have seen through the week.

04.01.2022 Still working on preparation for racing the wagon on October 13 at Swan Hill and Drag Challenge in November I adjusted the ride height on the coil overs last night after the rear end was raised when the BMR arms went in. It appears the shock mounting hole on the arms is different to the factory position. I called into see Paul Lees on my way to work to have a play on his wheel aligner and adjusted the Toe and Camber back to where I wanted it. Still amazes me how sensitive th...e machine is and how little movement it can read from a stringless alignment machine. I also picked up my 18" rear 'stealth' rims from A+ Powdercoating in Hoppers. These will be used when travelling to and from race meetings so there is no chance of the 20's being damaged (or stolen! Lol who would want standard 18" rims!) Fortunately they fit over the Brembo calipers and the higher profile tyres will be better on the outback roads of Drag Challenge!

04.01.2022 All loaded up and ready for a trip to Street Car Fabrications next week! It will also be the first towing job for the Colorado, so learning how to tow with that is going to be interesting. Should do it easily with the open trailer and naked chassis. #billetspecialties rear wheels, #mickeythompson tyres, #kirkeyracing seats, Simpson belts and parachute, pedals, fuel tank, ice tank, carbon dash, steering wheel and #markwilliamsenterprises quick release all ready to go.

04.01.2022 Very fortunate tonight to be attending the Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame Gala awards. Sitting in the room with so many legends of Motorsport and hero's over the years is humbling. Stephen Gall, Mick Doohan, Leigh Adams, to name a few. Yes I know their motorbike riders, but that's where I was before I found cars!!... Jim Reed is here tonight to be inducted. Those bloody touring car drivers are built like jockey's!

03.01.2022 I love the design and engineering side of motorsport almost as much as driving and racing! I had previously 3D printed a switch mount for the 2-step to clamp onto the steering wheel. What I found was when footbraking the wagon I couldn't coordinate my thumb to release the button at the same time as my foot when I was concentrating harder on getting my foot off the brake as quickly as possible.... Solution? Move the switch onto the brake pedal so my foot is releasing the brake and the 2-step switch at the same time.

02.01.2022 A nice little reward arrived in the mail yesterday. Let's see what next season brings!

01.01.2022 PME designed and manufactured diff bush puller being tested on my spare diff. 3 x bushes in 10 mins easy. Getting some practice before I do it on the diff in the car and replace the bushes with a BMR nylon/polyurethane combo in the next week or so! (Also doing adjustable lower control arms, toe arms, trailing arms and driveshaft safety loop at the same time.)

01.01.2022 Wheel alignment done this morning with many thanks to Paul Lees for coming in on a Saturday and letting me loose on his new machine. Very happy with how well the alignment came up after fitting the BMR arms and how vertical the rear wheels are standing up. I'll take it back in a couple of weeks once it has settled and make sure it's all good to go. No one to blame now but me! ... Not much left on the list prior to Swan Hill on October 13th. The biggest most probably being a Wavetrac centre in the diff to get rid of the pansie GM LSD. I'm getting rid of all the weak links in the drivetrain before Drag Challenge and this is a big weakness in the Holden V8 driveline.